Parenting

Full of helpful advice for families starting to think about their child's bat or bar mitzvah, Bar & Bat Mitzvah For The Interfaith Family will be a helpful primer to all families (not just interfaith!).

Hanukkah Booklet

This booklet explains the history of Hanukkah, the symbolism and significance of lighting candles for eight nights, the blessings that accompany the lighting of the candles, the holiday's foods, the game of dreidels, and more!

Organizations

Connecting Interfaith Families to Jewish Life in Greater Cleveland by providing programs and opportunities for interfaith families to experience Judaism in a variety of venues, meet other interfaith families, and to connect to other Jewish organizations that may serve their needs.

For Program Providers

A great way for Jewish professionals and volunteers who work with and provide programming for people in interfaith relationships to locate resources and trainings to build more welcome into their Jewish communities; connect with and learn from each other; and publicize and enhance their programs and services.

Tag Archives: being both

In Marc Maron’s recent podcast “WTF,” he interviews Jason Segel (of How I Met Your Mother fame) at length and touches on his interfaith upbringing early on. (The interview itself begins at 14 minutes in, and the conversation turns to religion at about 15 ½ minutes.)

Segel’s father is Christian and his mother is Jewish, and he tells Maron, “Neither of them are religious. So they made this decision that they were going to let me decide, which is like the dumbest thing you can do for a kid. Because you don’t really care [at that age].”

He goes on to say, “At Christian school you’re the Jewish kid and at Hebrew school you’re the Christian kid. I think that’s the nature of groups.”

It’s not surprising that Haaretz picked up on the message that being a “half-Jew” (their words, not ours—we do not promote this term) equaled “outsider” for Segel. Being brought up with two religions does not work for everyone, and perhaps having parents who Segel did not consider religious themselves, he didn’t have the necessary context for religion at home that is necessary to form a religious identity.

Susan Katz Miller takes issue with Haartez’s framing of the interview: “Clearly, by leading with this idea [of interfaith equals outsider], the intent was to use Segel’s story as a cautionary tale, warning parents away from dual-faith education, or from interfaith marriage in general.”

The argument that raising children in an interfaith family can lead to them not identifying as Jewish is nothing new. And Katz Miller makes some good points in response to this assertion, including:

“Yes, it is essential for interfaith children to have support for integrating two (or more) cultures in their families, rather than bouncing back and forth between two separate religious worlds.”

Katz Miller touches on the danger in simply being dropped into two different religious institutions without enough context at home or awareness within the religious institutions themselves about interfaith families. We don’t know exactly what Segel’s religious life was like at home, but it sounds like there might not have been much reinforcement of what he was learning outside the home. At InterfaithFamily, we try to educate parents and offer many ways to boost their knowledge of Judaism and how to do Jewish at home, so that a child has a framework for what they are learning and why it’s important to their family. And we work to help Jewish organizations create a welcoming environment where kids will feel they belong–regardless of their background.

Being raised interfaith (as I was, truly, with both Jewish and Catholic traditions and holidays) and observing two religions will inevitably lead to some confrontation with others. For me, the first time this happened was in elementary school, at the lunch table.

For some reason, the kids that I have seen talk about religion other than around holidays or in passing have been Jews. For better or worse, I have noticed that there can be an air of exclusivity amongst some Jewish people—even in young children. Surely this exclusivity can be part of the reason that the Jewish people remain alive and well as a culture and religion, but it can also be to our detriment.

As I sat across from a kid who seemed to be the elementary school dictionary of all things Jewish, it appeared the attention at the table was all his. I don’t remember how it all came up and I don’t know how it came back around to me but all of the sudden he called me in for questioning: “Is your mom or your dad Jewish?” he asked with his head cocked to the side, and a bit of a bobble to it. I answered him, and finished with, “But I am half-Jewish.” He looked smug. “That means that you’re Jewish. You can’t be both.” He said this with a professorial smirk.

I know he sounds a little devilish for an elementary school kid, but he was just proud of where he came from and of the knowledge he had acquired. If it helps to imagine him spewing crumbs of a peanut butter sandwich out of his mouth as he talks, then I recommend that you do that. I always do, and it helps diffuse the bits of white hot childhood rage that I still have left from the incident.

No matter how hard I tried to convince him of my dual faith identity he just came back with smart remarks. The whole table was on his side, and now they were laying into me too. Even the Rice Krispy treat that my mom packed me that day wasn’t going to cheer me up after that.

When I came home from school that day it turned out my parents had the same reaction I did. “How dare that child tell my child who he is or isn’t.” They essentially told me to not engage with him anymore. So I did exactly that, and he and I never really had any problems after that. The four other lunch tables were more than welcoming. To this day, he is still the same little know-it-all that I remember, and we are able to respectfully disagree without any mention of the old incident. In fact, I should thank him. This first confrontation prepared me for the many more to come in my life.

A message to parents who plan on raising their kids in more than one religion: Your child will not come out of this situation unscathed. But the emotional scars that come from it will heal and lead to a strong sense in character and identity. Without this instance and a handful of others, who knows where my tolerance level would be for people who don’t accept my Judaism. Not to mention, there are beautiful things that can come from being interfaith.